External Customers
Being able to answer five fundamental questions, the “5Ws,” who, what, when, where, and why about any customer, is vital in providing excellent customer service. The answers to the 5Ws create a profile of varying demographic, psychographic, and product usage characteristics. “Who”question factors, for example, may include age, gender, income, race, religion, sexual orientation, education, location, marital, and familial status. Likewise, “why” questions may help determine the purpose of the purchase, such as a business buying a ream of paper for printing invoices or for parents buying the same paper for their children to draw pictures. Together answering the 5Ws helps retailers identify ideal customers through a process called market segmentation, the grouping of prospective customers into groups, or segments, that have common needs and respond similarly to a marketing action. (Source: Investopedia.com.)